I am told that these signs are appearing around San Francisco — thank you, Doug Marquis! — offering either an open-ended or a traditional problem to give your math students. Pick one: What do you notice? How far is the… Read More ›
Teaching & Learning
Unorthodox Quarantine Bonus
I was trying to avoid writing anything about the novel coronavirus or COVID-19, because that’s of course what everyone is talking about. But, sitting here in self-semiquarantine, I have just listened to a special 16-minute bonus episode of the Unorthodox… Read More ›
What difference could a few zeroes make? Zero is nothing, isn’t it?
Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million check and still have money left over. I feel like a $1 million check would be life-changing for most people…. Read More ›
Weston wins! High School Quiz Show: Tantasqua vs. Weston
Congratulations to Weston High School for their impressive performance in the opening salvo of this year’s WGBH High School Quiz Show! Weston beat Tantasqua Regional by the comfortable margin of 555–440, despite the fact that Tantasqua’s team consisted of four… Read More ›
Mathematics Galore!
The aims of a mathematics masterclass and of this book are to enthuse educate inspire challenge audiences of young people, their parents and teachers, with the wonder, excitement, power, beauty, and relevance of modern mathematical ideas. So it says in… Read More ›
A very intensive language course
In my 1/30/2018 review of Our War I mentioned that one of the few war novels that I’ve read was Im Westen Nichts Neues, which I guess is translated as All Quiet on the Western Front in English, though I remember it in… Read More ›
Map workshop at the BPL
Interactive historical local maps! Interactive historical local maps! Yesterday I attended a fascinating workshop at the Boston Public Library (JP branch), where we explored their new home-brewed web-based software for dynamically viewing historical changes in local maps and used it to… Read More ›
Why do so many girls and women leave STEM?
No, I’m not going to mansplain the situation. I just want to draw your attention to a pair of essays about it, one by Karen Morenz, embedded within another by Scott Aaronson. My expectation is that nobody will disagree with… Read More ›
Against My Better Judgment: An Intimate Memoir of an Eminent Gay Psychologist
Would this headline be clickbait? “Eminent Harvard Psychologist Admits That He’s Gay!” Ho hum, it wouldn’t work as clickbait today. Nobody today would be shocked (except perhaps by the choice of verb in this made-up headline). But back in the… Read More ›
Call me by my name.
“Call me either one. I don’t care.” It always surprises me when a student gives that sort of reply in response to my asking “Do you want to be called Liz or Elizabeth?” (or the equivalent, of course, depending on… Read More ›
